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What's Alluring, What's Touring, What's New?

By Nancy Wozny

A peek at the new season

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet

Kennedy Center, Nov. 7–11

The company known for celebrating Balanchine reaches outside that circle of masterworks with Paul Mejia’s Romeo and Juliet. But rest assured, also on the agenda will be Balanchine’s astringent Agon, complex Episodes, and serene Mozartiana.

William Forsythe considers the traditions of Elizabethan drama in his newest opus, Sider. The audio soundtrack is derived from a 16th-century play, and the earphone-wearing dancers carry giant sheets of cardboard while dancing to a score we do not hear. As cryptic—and possibly fascinating—as ever.

The Forsythe Company in Sider. Photo by Dominik Mentzos, Courtesy BAM.

Storms are beautiful and violent, and therein lies the tension of Lucy Guerin’s approach. In her newest work, Weather, plastic bags transform into clouds, stirring up turbulence. “Dance like the wind” takes on new meaning as the Australian renegade mines our visceral relationship to nature.

After last fall’s upheaval, Miami City Ballet returns to a classic with Serenade. The first ballet Balanchine created on American soil is a good choice for the company’s first full season with Lourdes Lopez, the former New York City Ballet principal now at the helm of MCB. Also on the program are Balanchine’s Ballo della Regina and Wheeldon’s bracing Polyphonia.

The voice of the “it’s complicated” generation, Kate Weare illuminates emotional terrains with her idiosyncratic vocabulary. Garden features an upside-down tree, a large stump, and four dancers in flirt-and-fight mode. The evening also includes excerpts from her new work, Dark Lark, which has its New York premiere at BAM Nov. 6–9.

A prima ballerina of the Mariinsky Ballet and American Ballet Theatre is back with a program of new works crafted especially for her ravishing talents by Carolyn Carlson and Jean-Christophe Maillot. With haute-couture costumes by Karl Lagerfeld.

La Vishneva. Photo by Sasha Gulyaev, Courtesy Segestrom.

Milwaukee Ballet’s Romeo & Juliet

Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, Oct. 31–Nov. 3

Doomed lovers, feuding families, and one timeless love story make Romeo & Juliet a treasured, bard-based ballet. Michael Pink’s popular version is a fitting ballet to begin his second decade as artistic director.

Luz San Miguel and David Hovhannisyan in Romeo & Juliet. Photo by Jessica Kaminski, Courtesy MB.

Tywla Tharp turns ballet upside down in her fierce In the Upper Room. The pointe-shoe-vs.-sneaker battle plays out in one of Tharp’s most relentlessly paced ballets. Performed alongside Nine Sinatra Songs, it’s going to be a Tharpfest for PBT fans.

Houston Balletpresents new works by James Kudelka, Garrett Smith, and Melissa Hough, Sept. 5–15.

New York City Ballet premieres a work by Angelin Preljocaj at their gala Sept. 19.

Armitage Gone! Dancepremieres Karole Armitage’s Fables on Global Warming at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Sept. 24. Touring through Oct. 26 to Kansas, Colorado, Texas, and North Carolina.

Fall for Dance has commissioned works by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa for Ballet Hispanico, Liam Scarlett for two Royal Ballet dancers, and Justin Peck for Sara Mearns and a partner yet to be named. Sept. 25–Oct. 5.

Twyla Tharp makes a new work for Pacific Northwest Ballet, Sept. 27–Oct. 6.

Nobody tangles with a classic like the U.K. choreographer Matthew Bourne. He has been as wildly successful for musicals like Mary Poppins as for his mostly male Swan Lake. With his gothic take on Sleeping Beauty, he completes his Tchaikovsky cycle that started with his 1992 Nutcracker.